DS i XL Grenade

Sometimes you just have to jump on the grenade. If you’ve been reading along with this blog you know my opinion of the DS and it’s not very high. I like people games instead of computer games. It’s not that I dislike computer games – I love them – but not to the extent that kids play them today. There is a disconnect occurring between children today and other children. They’re playing games too much by themselves and with a computer and not interacting with others. We’re social animals and this can’t be good for the upcoming generation. So that’s the set-up.

The camera zooms in on my face. It’s Sunday morning and it’s my birthday. No wait. Rewind. Go back to Saturday afternoon. The day before. I’m home after yoga class (a good day with 19 people and good pranic energy in the room). Mom-ita and M-ito are out shopping for various things including my birthday gift. The phone rings. It’s Mom-ita.

“M-ito has a gift all picked out for you,” she says cagily.

“Okay… ” I say, waiting for what sounds like is coming after. I’m picturing some Warhammer figures (a new game we’re playing together at a shop in Manhattan), or something yoga-like, maybe a cool stuffed animal that he will get soon after he gives it to me.

“It’s a DS,” she says quietly and waits.

“A what?” I ask.

“A DS i XL. He says you’ve always wanted one and that if you get one – you and he can play the game together at the same time.” She waits again. “He said you need the DS i XL version because it’s a bigger screen and you can’t see the small screen very well.” I think she’s trying to hold back laughter now but I can’t tell.”

I rack my brain. Have I ever told him I wanted a DS? Have I ever told him how much that would mean to me? If I did, and it’s possible, it was only to make him feel better because I would never in my life think that I would get one without someone forcing me to play with a gun to my head. Perhaps I have overstated that a little.  I took a deep breath and exhaled. We have only M-ito. “Of course,” I said. ”That’s very sweet. I’ll take the XL and I’ll jump on the grenade. It’s my turn. You’ve been playing Harry Potter on the Wii all summer (and loving it I should say because Mom-ita loves to play the Lego games) so it’s my turn.”

Now she laughs. “This is your iPad, you know,” she says when she gets her breath back.

“Thanks,” I say. An iPad. Oh that hurts. She did that on purpose.

M-ito couldn’t wait so I opened my gift that night.

Fast forward to the next morning, October 3, birthday morning.

I sleep until almost 7:30am and it’s wonderful. The bed is so warm beneath the comforter. The wind is blowing outside and making the shades move back and forth. M-ito is staring at me from a few inches away. “Happy birthday,” he says, eyes full of mischief. “Let’s play your DS.”

And with a hug, a heartfelt sigh, and a smile, I say, “Yes. Let’s play with my DS. I’ll need your help setting it up.”

Forty-nine  years on this planet and still counting.

A Perfect Day

They don’t happen too often but when they do they tend to be simple, just like this past Saturday.

• Wake up at 6am to do yoga practice and prepare for morning class. Asana and seated meditation then shower and get dressed for class.
• 7:15am take Spike-ito out for a walk.
• 8:30am leave to teach morning yoga class. M-ito and Mom-ita are still asleep.
• 9:15-10:45am teach class – students are back from vacations, class is packed, and life is good.
• 11:30am back home for brunch with Mom-ita and M-ito.
• 12:30pm take Spike-ito out for walk with M-ito. We talk about Warhammer games (our newest father son obsession), school, life in general.
• 1:30-4:30pm lazing around on couch with M-ito, him watching Saturday afternoon TV shows, me napping on and off, Mom-ita reading, napping, cleaning.
• 5pm head out with M-ito to the dog run for the first time. Mom-ita is napping.
• 6-6:45pm Watch Spike-ito make friends and play at the dog run. M-ito at first watches from the bench trying to read his book. Then after five minutes of watching Spike-ito run, wrestle, crash into cement pylons, run, run, and run some more with his new pals, M-ito gets up and joins in. He chases Spike-ito then meets the other dogs, moves our stuff next to the other owners on the other bench, and starts up conversations with the other owners like, “What kind of dog is yours? How old is he? Where did you get him?” It’s hard not to smile while you’re at the dog run. It’s a pretty happy place and the happiness is infectious. I marvel at my son and how he, as an eight year old boy holds himself and interacts with adults. As the dogs start to get tired we collar Spike-ito up and walk him home. All the way home we talk about the experience, what we learned about Spike-ito (he’s a high energy dog, loves to run, is faster than the average dog, gets knocked over a lot but like the energizer bunny keeps on going, loves, loves, loves to play, and how much he needs a bath after all the slobbering from all the other dogs and the dirt and dust) and what we’d like to do when we get home.
• 8pm our pizza from Louie’s arrives. M-ito loves their pizza.
• 8:15-10pm we watch Diary of a Wimpy Kid, all three of us and sometimes four of us (Spike-ito included) seated across the couch, laughing. Ice cream included as dessert.
• 10pm Mom-ita takes Spike-ito out for his final walk and M-ito and I head to bed. We read for a few minutes then its lights out.
• 11pm Mom-ita joins us.

Small Gems

1. My son is in his PJ’s. He’s bent over almost double, pulling his pants down off of his butt and back up onto his waist like a rapid fire mooning project. Mom-ita and I ask him what he’s doing.

“I’m just getting the static out of them,” M-ito says.

2. M-ito is standing at the table doing his homework. He’s playing with the newest toy that’s sweeping his school, silly bands (different colored and shaped rubber bands).

“You’re addicted to them,” Mom-ita says.

“Nooooo,” M-ito says. “The only thing I’m addicted to is shiny objects.”

A Day of Knights Part 2: The Search for Swords and Black Knights

I found nerf broadswords – the Marauder long sword. The nerf folks have different kinds of swords but they actually have a good looking broadsword (a two-handed sword, not a one handed sword) and I started collecting them. I bought a pair for M-ito and me. Then we tried them out in the apartment a few times. We didn’t break anything, amazingly, and because they are heavier than the regular size swords made by nerf, they are harder to swing around fast. So, though they are heavier, they are more difficult to use. I figured they would have  a lower accident potential. It’s still amazes me how I came up with that calculation.

I thought about using shields and contemplated garbage can lids of all sorts at Home Depot. I even thought about making them out of plywood, but that would have made things so much more complicated – and I’m no carpenter – this I know about myself. And I was trying to keep things simple. That plus I tried out the regular swords from nerf and they were much lighter than the broadswords and when M-ito and I played with them I got tagged a number of times on the hand and it hurt like the devil. I saw the potential for all kinds of face wounds and broken fingers. I figured I’d stick with the heavier and slower weapons. It would also tire them out. the swords were almost as big as the kids were. Besides shields would mean teaching them a whole different skill set – both sword and shield. Broadsword would require concentration on only the weapon as attack and defense. I knew broadsword from stage combat class. I’d choreographed a one-act play I wrote with a broadsword fight in it. My friend DB knew broadsword too and we’d practiced together enough to know the ins and outs of it. And Austino and M-ito wanted broadsword. Shields would have to wait for another day of knights that concentrated on the shield wall.

So… nerf  broadswords it was.

My friend DB is an actor and all around good sport with a twinkle in his eye when it comes to things like teaching kids about swords. So I pitched it to him at breakfast one morning just as he was getting off work and I was going to work (he works the graveyard shift at a law firm doing legal proofreading). “Want to help me teach M-ito and a few of his friends how to use a broadsword?”

“What?”

“We’ll teach ‘em the basic foot work, the cuts, the parries, give ‘em an obstacle course to run through, then have a giant melee – kids against adults. What do you think?”

He only hesitated a moment. He looked out the diner window as if imagining the mayhem. ”Sure,” he said, nodding.

“Austino’s father is going to help out also and we’ll get one more. So there’ll be four adults. We’ll be the black knights. We’ll get the kids all padded up with arm pads and bycicle helmets and then let them go at us.”

DB nodded, his smile getting bigger. He loves these kinds of things.

“And I want you and me to show them a short fight with the real swords. Then I’ll do some choreography with each of them so they get to try the real ones out. We’ll rehearse a couple of times before-hand, if you can spare the time.”

“Yeah, we’d better,” he said.

“Then you’re in?”

He nodded.

Let the Mayhem Begin!

It would be two months before we picked a day but I had my players and the beginnings of a plan.

Disney World Pin-Possible

We went to Disney World for spring break. It was M-ito’s second time there. He’d been there before just after his grandmother died when he was almost 5. Things haven’t changed much, though there are some new attractions. You still can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake. Is that a real rock or some kind of plaster one? Is that wood or molded plaster? Is that a creature or an animatronics animal? It’s like Alice falling down into the rabbit hole sometimes. Other times it is wonderful and beautiful. Most of the flowers are real and they take your breath away.

The first three days were hard because Mom-ita and me , well, we both (me more I have to admit) thought M-ito would want to go on the rides. And M-ito is not a rides kind of kid. He’s gentler and not into roller coasters. He wants to be that kind of kid but knows he’s not. He kept saying no to rides and Mom-ita and me kept getting more and more frustrated about suggesting rides to go on. Finally we got on line for Goofy’s Barnstorming Rollar Coaster – a mild one that’s good for starting kinds off on these kinds of rides so the guide-book says, and as soon as we got on line the coaster roared by. M-ito looked at me and said, “No. I’m not going on.” I said, “That sounds fine to me.” Then we sat down just past where the line started and I told him how proud I was of him for knowing what he could do and what he couldn’t do. I told him this was a great quality to have and that I loved him for it. And for once I do’nt think I talked too much because he didnt tell me to stop talking. He seemed relieved.

It took me until that moment to realize what I should have known from all the clues and hints I’ve had for the last seven years about my son but for some reason have ignored in my haste to see that he rode the rides at Disney because… that’s what you do when you’re there. Well, not my son.

Here are four things my son really enjoyed while he was at Disney and if your kid is like him they might like these kinds of attractions too:

1. Trading pins. Disney has pin stations everywhere. I bought a lanyard for M-ito to wear around his neck and a starter set of pins then M-ito traded with Disney workers who had lanyard or belt holders, or holding a big board with pins (these were the real gold mines because of the large number of pins they had). He had to go up to them and ask to trade then traded for a pin he liked. My son asked Disney workers all over EPCOT and Animal Kingdom – for a shy child not an easy thing to do, but he did it easily a dozen times. It took me a while to figure out that I should buy really cheap pins (the green label ones) that he didn’t like so that he could trade up for more expensive pins or pins that he did like. I bought a good $100 worth of pins before I figured this out. I’m slow when it comes to these things. M-ito loved doing this – asking people to trade, searching for just the right pin to trade for, and displaying them around his neck like trophies. And we did this on a off for two whole days. While we shopped he was on the lookout for Disney workers with lanyard around their necks. He was never bored.
2. Kim Possible in EPCOT. We spent two days at EPCOT and did one mystery/adventure each day. They took about an hour to do and are like being a secret agent on a mission for Kim Possible. We completely explored France and Norway doing each mission and had pictures taken of us from hidden cameras, searched for clues behind pictures, ran back and forth from one side of the country to the other, and laughed while we puzzled out where the right doorway was hidden. M-ito loved this “attraction.” And I had a lot of fun doing it with him.
3. Pirates of the Caribbean Become a Pirate – not the ride, that was too scary. I’m talking about the full costume and make-up turn your kid into a pirate deal. It also took an hour (and cost ugh you don’t want to know), but M-ito enjoyed every minute of it. And we ended up with a great costume for Halloween and a great picture of our son in full pirate costume.
4. Lego land at Downtown Disney. We spent at least an hour on line (go early not late as I think the lines are smaller) but an hour before that playing with Legos at all the different stations. And you could buy your own brick packages (you pick your own bricks and put them in a small container making your own set – sooo cool I made up one myself). M-ito loves Lego. Just beware of being there too late as folks are out drinking later on and wandering around from pleasure island.

Other suggestions. Take at least one day to not go to any park and hang out at the pool at your hotel. Kids love pools. And if the sun is out and it’s not too cold… you will too. M-ito wanted to learn how to play poker so I taught him how to play. We made great use of a single deck of cards the whole trip (I brought them everywhere) and it was really fun. Who would have thought?

Pokemon DS

My son is obsessed with DS Pokemon. Okay, he’s obsessed with Pokemon and playing with the DS Pokemon is as close as he can come to actually capturing and playing with a real Pokemon.

On the car ride in to school he talks to me about Pokemon.

In the morning while I’m doing my yoga, he’s reading the DS guide-book and asking me questions about Pokemon.

At the breakfast table he talks to me about Pokemon.

At dinner he talks to me about Pokemon.

Going to the bathroom he talks about Pokemon.

Taking a shower he talks about Pokemon.

He asks me which one’s he should trade with and for. He asks me which one’s he should keep. He asks me which psychic Pokemon is more powerful. For the record I usually don’t know but I guess a lot. Whenever I suggest something he usually doesn’t need me too. I’m his sounding board, and nothing more. But I’m glad he needs me for something. He wants me to get a DS too so we can play together wirelessly. Did I mention how much I dislike the DS? What to do. The game is too expensive and I just don’t think I could pick up that grenade. Still, I watch the TV show with him and the movies. I like them. It’s the DS I have a harder time with. Fortunately my son has some friends he talks to about Pokemon, and can trade with but I know it is a game played mostly solo and I wish it wasn’t.

In the last month he has played less games and more DS. It worries me. I keep waiting for the intensity level to go down. This afternoon Mom-ita put a moratorium on playing any electronic game and though M-ito had trouble with it, we had a good night of talking, thumb wrestling, arm wrestling, and laughing – something I’ve missed since the DS came to town. Perhaps it’s my imagination. I’m torn. I like the Pokemon thing. I still don’t like the DS.

Leggo of my Lego

“I want to take apart my legos,” M-ito said.

Mom-ita and I just stared at him. “What?” I asked.

“M-ito says he wants to take apart all his legos.”

“All of them?” I asked, with my mouth dropping open.

M-ito nodded with a big smile. “And it’ll be easy to take ‘em apart. I’ll just smash ‘em up.”

“No,” Mom-ita said. “You’ll take them apart. Now why do you want to take them apart?”

“All of them?” I asked again, still uncomprehending. You see, M-ito has been building legos models for a couple of years now. We have the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Underwater Adventures (my personal favorite), Mars, Castle, Power Miners, and a few others I can’t remember. They line two book cases in his room. He keeps them out of the way so that no one can touch them and break them. Little kids… look out. He built them. He plays with them. He collects them. I just didn’t understand.

“We’ll get a bin for them and you can put all the pieces in that.”

“That’s right. That’s what I thought,” M-ito said, still smiling.

“But Dad-dito will take pictures of them first so we can remember them. And you don’t have to break up all of them. You should save some.” Mom-ita had it down.

“You want to break them up?” I said again. I was having trouble with attachment, trying to hold on to the legos. M-ito was ready to let them go and I wasn’t.

I took pictures of him giving me the thumbs up next to his shelves. I asked him if he wanted to save the underwater adventure models – for that’s what I think of them as, models – models without glue. I spent a lot of evenings sitting on the floor with him searching for and finding pieces for him while he snapped them together.

“No,” M-ito said. “I’ll need the pieces for building other things – you know, like Austino does with them.” Austino and his friend have a bin they build all kinds of structures, spaceships and weapons of destruction from. If Austino does it, M-ito will do it too. Austino is a year older and is M-ito’s hero.

I nodded, then shrugged. “I’ll go clean out a bin.” So I did. It’s still sitting empty beneath the play table. But the Deathstar is half disassembled.  My heart aches a little. But if it means there’s more space in his room…

Dumb and Stupid Redux

The holidays are still a fresh memory but all the decoration are down.

The DS is now an integral part of the household.

We were all working last night. Mom-ita preparing dinner, me preparing for my yoga class, and M-ito preparing to be a world class fossil hunter. It sounds exciting, I know it does. But here’s the thing. In order to be a world class fossil hunter my son has to do the following:

1. Sit hunched over a tiny handheld portable electronic gaming device (a DS) for an hour, possibly more if we let him – and we try not to let him ever go that long;
2. Intuit directions and rules as he goes along as to what is needed to be a world class fossil hunter (not easy because the rules are in small print and I can barely read ‘em even with my reading glasses and, of course M-ito doesn’t like to read the rules, and double of course because you also have to understand gaming lingo) – also M-ito makes lots of mistakes along the way and it is frustrating going;
3. Figure out how to pause the damned thing when either his mother or father wants him to stop to either, say… get the table set, or answer a question, or interact in any way with the world around him;
4. Yell out successes and failures to me while I’m ten feet away typing wickedly at emails (of which I have no idea what he’s saying because I haven’t played the game and can only guess at what his statements mean – I usually simply answer, “that’s great,” or “keep trying, you’ll get it next time.”);
5. Do lots of thumb exercises and obtain good hand-eye coordination (hey, I have to be honest – it does take some of these qualities to succeed in the game including make good use of your opposable thumbs)

So… after the fifth or sixth time we asked him to come in and set the table M-ito, still playing, nodded and mumbled something akin to, “Yes.”

I got up and said, in typical, I’m-not-proud of myself-mode, “If you don’t put that game down I’m going to take it away.”

At which point he said, with extreme frustration, “I can’t figure out how to pause the game without losing the game I’m playing.” He said this, uncannily, while still playing, barely missing a beat.

I reached over for the game and he leaned away from me, using his elbow to slightly block my angle on the DS. I said, in my most menacing voice – because I was getting pissed off now (though you should note that I also knew I was tired from my work and upset at myself for letting him play so long and so… attempting to take some responsibility for the confrontation occurring), “You’d better turn that thing off right now or I’m going to throw it out the window.” Ah, that was poetry.

That’s when the tears started and the crying – all while still playing, at least minimally so his game didn’t disappear and be reduced to oblivion. Sometimes the most difficult part of playing these games is figuring out how to save your game. The simple precaution in the future is to read how to do this first, before he starts to play. After you’ve plowed through an hour of hard work making mistakes and learning game-play I understand not wanting to lose what you’ve gained. I do. I really do.

I used some yogic breathing, calmed myself and said, “Let’s look at the instructions and see what they say.”

Twenty seconds, M-ito still playing, I took the DS from him. His eyes wide with terror he shouted, “No!” as I touched a button to find the right screen. A quick flash appeared with the dialog, “Do you want to save this game?” M-ito used his stylus, angling the two screens towards him so he could see and pressed the statement a few times.

“It’s not saving!” he shouted again.

I took his stylus and tapped the, “Yes.”

The screen disappeared and M-ito mouthed, “O.”

Then another screen came on asking, “Do you want to continue playing?” and I quickly tapped “No.”

M-ito only saw the no and broke down into tears again. These are the kind of tears that go right through you. The dad-ditto-you’ve-betrayed-me kind.

“You lost my game,” he said. “Now I have to go back and start all over!” Variations of this came and went between sobbing and weeping. I sat in the other room, looking at Mom-ita and looking back into the room. I might have said, “It’s only a game,” but I hope I didn’t. I tried to tell him it was okay – that I’d not erased anything. He swore it was all lost. The game didn’t mean a thing to me, but I tried to remember it meant a lot to this 7-year old boy. M-ito’s anger turned sullen. He wouldn’t come in and eat. He wouldn’t talk to us. He might even have said something in the nature of, “You don’t want me” or “love me” but I’m still to this moment not sure. Mom-ita as the neutral party, tried to get involved. She said, “We’ll take a look at it after we eat,” but he got angry at her too.

We ate a quiet and unhappy meal. I got angry again after a while too and called him on his attitude (how did he get that look in his eyes and the nasty set of his jaw?) and the way he spoke to his mother. Otherwise I was silent the rest of the meal too. It was a big unhappy party and I didn’t think I could be brought lower until I started wondering if I had indeed lost his game. What if I did?

Finally, dinner over and the game back in hand, Mom-ita playing mediator. We looked at it together and lo and behold. The game was right where it was supposed to be – saved and in one piece.

M-ito looked up at me and smiled, gave me a big hug – night and day.

“Next time have a little faith in your father,” I said. Exactly what my own father had said to me many a time when I was a kid. Oh how these things come back and haunt you.

Games a 7-Year Old Plays

Here was M-ito’s list for Santa (who he still believes may or may be real and I’m so glad he’s still on the fence about the big round guy).

1. The Nintendo DS (see Dumb and Stupid (DS) previous entry)
2. Rock’em Sock’em Robots (Just like my brother and I played when we were kids. Santa Aunt got it for him. We’ve played about ten minutes with it so far and its’ still the same game. Even Mom-ita played a few rounds. You get tired of it before you break it. We’ll see how long it lasts in active service. But as a retro gift I’m glad his aunt got it for him.)
3. Sorry Sliders (The TV commercial totally got him. We played our own version of the game with disks we have and that was almost as much fun as the real game. Cousins got this for him and we’ve played it three times. I can’t tell it it’s a keeper of not. It’s basically like a four person small shuffleboard game.)
4. Battleship (Friends got this for him – the electronic version and he got the small travel version. As Mom-ita says, “Now we don’t even have to talk to each other when we play” – the computer does it all. He loves this game even though it goes slow after a while.)
5. The Force Unleashed Wii (It’s too violent but he played it at a friends house and Mom-ita said it was “OK” so we have it along with the light sabers that go with it.)
6. Spy Gear Eavesdropper Remote Control Vehicle (Santa Aunt got him the infrared goggles instead. Spy gear was heavily pedaled on TV commercials and the stuff is neat looking but… M-ito hasn’t opened the box yet.)

Here’s what Santa added in the bag to combat EGS:

1. The next three Hiccup the Viking Books by Cressida Cowel (M-ito loves these).
2. The next four Droon books by Tony Abbot
3. Carcassonne (an award wining tile game about building a city in medieval times by Rio Grande Games for 8+ and for 2-5 players)
4. The Settlers of Catan (another award-winning game for 10+ and 2-5 players)
5. Gamewright Games: Going Nuts, Say Cheese, and Constellation Connect (still one of my favorite game companies for kids – card games and dice games like you’ve never seen before)

Dumb and Stupid (DS)

I didn’t make it up (Dumb and Stupid was coined by a mom we know) and I’m sure there are many other words that have been used for the DS from Nintendo. But we’ve broken down and Mom-ita bought one for M-ito for the holidays. So we’ll be making up our own name for the DS in good time.

First impressions. It’s a pretty cool looking game system and M-ito loves it. He’s been asking for it for over two years so he’s been patient – and he’s been prepped for it by friends who have it and by commercials on TV over and over and over again.

The slouch. When M-ito plays he slouches and lets his chin sink to his chest while the game rests on his belly. It’s a look that is neither appealing nor good for him. We’ve negotiated a sit-up-straight posture and he’s readily agreed as long as he can keep on playing. He’s totally unaware of what he’s doing to his body while he plays because he’s so so so involved in the game game game, the two screens, and the game.

When it comes to electronic games I’ve told M-ito the same thing over and over again. Usually when he’s heard me say something over and over he just says, “I know” when I begin the statement. My EGS (electronic game statement) goes like this, “Just remember. It’s more important to play with other human beings than it is to play with an electronic game. ” Today I only got to the word play when he nodded and said, “I’ll remember” stopping me before I could finish. It wasn’t his usual, “I know, I know.” And when he said it he looked at me with surprisingly understanding eyes and a small, shy smile. I knew he knew what I was going to say. He knew it word for word. It wasn’t his usual, “I know, I know.” He is so happy to have this game. Well, game system. He now also has four games to go with it. I let the unfinished EGS remain unfinished. I knew he’d already completed in his head, just the way I had.

M-ito usually doesn’t get too lost in video games. He likes them but hasn’t given up on board games completely and I’m glad. But the threat of electronic domination is always there. It scares me. I liked playing the earlier generation of these games when I was a kid too – though we never bought a game system, I spent a lot of quarters at the video arcade over the years.

Now M-ito has a DS. I didn’t want to get one for him. I can go on record with that. I was against it with a loud NO and have held firm for more than two years. But… Mom-ita said he needs to have one so he can be like other kids – so he doesn’t get left behind. I have this image of a friend of mine in 9th grade telling me right before a band rehearsal, “You know nobody wears t-shirts under their shirts anymore. You should get rid of them.” I had a white t-shirt on under my collared shirt. My friend was pointing to the white t-shirt highly visible underneath. I remember nodding and never wearing a white undershirt again.

This time Mom-ita won. Hell, who am I kidding? Mom-ita wins 9 out of 10 times. But in the past the DS had been my 1 out of 10. Seeing M-ito’s face when he said, “I’ll remember,” – actually knowing that he’d listened to me and heard something that I’d said seemed to make the difference. For now it made the decision OK. The DS (Dangerous Sloucher?) is here to stay – at least on a temporary visa.